The Spider and the Stone

A Novel of Scotland’s Black Douglas

Synopsis

As the 14th century dawns, Scotland’s survival hangs by a spider’s thread. While the clans feud over their empty throne, the brutal Edward Longshanks of England invades the weakened northern kingdom, scheming to annex it to his realm.

But one frail, dark-skinned lad stands in the Plantagenet monarch’s path.

The beleaguered Scots cherish James Douglas as their “Good Sir James.” Yet in England, his slashing raids deep into Yorkshire and Northumbria wreak such terror that he is branded the Black Douglas.

As a boy, James falls in love with the ravishing Isabelle MacDuff, whose clan for centuries has inaugurated Scottish monarchs on the hallowed Stone of Destiny. Their world is upturned when James befriends Robert Bruce, a bitter enemy of the MacDuffs. Forced to choose between love and clan loyalty, James and Isabelle must make fateful decisions that will draw the opposing armies to the bloody field of Bannockburn.

Here is the story of Scotland’s War of Independence and the remarkable events that followed the execution of William Wallace, whose legend was portrayed in the movie Braveheart. This thrilling epic leads the reader to the miraculous Stone of Destiny, to the famous Spider in the Cave, to the suppressed Culdee Church, and to the unprecedented Declaration of Arbroath, the stirring oath document that inspired the American Declaration of Independence four hundred years later. A saga of the star-crossed love, religious intrigue, and heroic sacrifice that saved Scotland during its time of greatest peril.